Log Cabins, Beaches, and Monsoons

I feel bad…I was just getting back to my regular blogging, when I decided to take off again. I started to tell you before I left, but something feels dangerous about announcing on the world wide web that you, Jeremiah and Abby Maddox of Birmingham (why don’t you just go on to whitepages.com and get our address), will be leaving a vacant house for the week. Any takers??? Not that we have a whole lot to steal,
but still. Jeremiah went to Montana with his Dad and brother, to learn how to build log homes. Not one to sit at home and sulk, I packed the girls up and we headed to the beach. Thankfully, Dad has a beautiful little place he lets me stay in for free, so that we could indulge in this luxury.

We had a few days of this beautiful weather, a COOL 70 (with those breezes off the ocean) but it didn’t keep us from getting out there in our swimsuits and my tough children even braved the water. I did manage to spend a couple of afternoons in the pool (which was either heated or very easily sun-warmed), so that the girls could really practice their swimming (Mary Aplin with swimmies. Don’t get too excited.).

Then, the weather got a little chillier and we had to resort to light jackets at sunset, but we were still happy.

Pace still asked me every night at bedtime if we could stay at the beach forever. The girls were tuckered by the close of each day, so I was putting them to bed early and watching girley movies or reading my book. There is something a little sick about the fact that I literally SQUEALED with delight one night because it was only 8:30, and I was already nestling in my bed, in a quiet clean house, with the ocean rolling outside my window, and my little book in my hand. Oh the simple joys!I think part of that joy was that I was no longer having to deal with the little devil on the left. The one who has NO FEAR and runs straight into the red flagged ocean, laughing all the way. Or straight off the side of the pool, without caring if I am looking or not.Does this swimsuit just make anybody else laugh? Something about the fact that the only other red, white, and blue swimsuits I’ve ever seen are cut into tiny triangles with big boobies behind them 🙂 You can see, Dapples wasn’t so happy about the suit either–serves her right after all that trouble she’d been giving me.It got colder and cloudier as the week went on. We tried hard to fight it. The girls just played in the sand with their clothes on, but once the torrential downpours had set in for a solid 24 hours, we gave up the ghost, and went back to Dothan Thursday evening.Caroline and Kendall came to Dothan for the weekend, and we had a really fun time riding out the storms together. On Saturday, we all stayed in our PJs until the late afternoon, ate more doughnuts than I would care to admit and watched a movie while stinkers were napping (Can you tell I had the girls by myself for a week? I feel like I’ve called them stinkers or rats this whole blog :)) The rain let off late afternoon, so we went to the mall and did a little shopping, and then my grandparents came over and kept the girls so that Dad could take us all out for dinner and a movie (we missed you Taylor!!!) Talk about your banner days!

I want to add here, that you know you’ve got a good Dad when, you’re running late for your movie, with no time to get that buttered popcorn and Diet Coke you crave (and REALLY needed after all those doughnuts from earlier), and suddenly he disappears from the theatre. Only to emerge moments later with both items in his hands. Didn’t even have to ask, he just knows us!

I’ll end with these sweet profile shots of the girls, and the note that Jeremiah did indeed graduate from log home school. He has asked, in all seriousness, that I frame his diploma so that we can hang it along with his MD. He may jump off roofs and build log cabins, but we sure did miss him this week.